ANDREW SZANTONSaying Farewell to a Lover of Sound
Randy Hostetler died on February lst, alone in Los Angeles, a victim of an acute viral infection, possibly Addison's Disease. His death was a cold shock to his many friends. Knowing Randy was a privilege, trying to hook up with him could be frustrating, and saying goodbye to him is impossible.
When we met as Sidwell sophomores in 1978, I loved words and he loved music, but I loved words bashfully, like a child, and Randy loved music as a serious adult musician. Over the next 18 years, he profoundly changed the way I regard music, and his artistic example encouraged me to make writing my career.
Randy was a musical prodigy who never acted the part. He regarded pretension with amused contempt. He preferred to just grab your elbow and play you a song -- choral music, John Cage, barbershop, madrigal, jazz fusion, funk -- his whole scrawny body rocking, his right foot tapping, his face contorted with pleasure. Though he could be highly articulate, music he liked he simply called "pretty cool," and music he loved "very cool."
As Sidwell juniors, Randy and I and two seniors formed a barbershop quartet. Randy was our music director. He discovered The Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America (SPEBSQSA) -- an acronym Randy pronounced in mock-hushed tones, like a national security secret. He brought me to several SPEBSQSA meetings, where SPEBSQSA gentlemen in polyester and bow ties closed each meeting with a rousing rendition of their theme song: "Keep America sing-ing, all day long. Let goodwill come a-wing-ing.... on a... song!!!" I found all this painfully cornball. Randy loved it.
He also loved Bob Dylan's music. In a letter, he described listening to "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan". His grammar sags, the words burst out: "... slightly envious but more just completely on the side of every song, moved, wanting to embody them, live them, convey this living to everyone I can, especially people I'm close to... "
Slowly, I realized that Randy loved something deeper than music. He loved sound, or as he called it, "ambient sound." Wherever he went, he felt encircled, instructed, comforted by sound. I moved out to San Francisco, became a writer, married. Randy visited my wife and me, and congratulated us on the high-pitched squeal of the brakes on the San Francisco subway. Now, whenever I hear ambient sounds -- footfall, subway brakes, a chirping fax machine -- I think of Randy and smile, and try to enjoy them.
Just after the birth of my son, I had a long, deep talk with Randy which I will always remember. But we bungled our final chance. Randy was driving up to Vermont to see his composer/improvisor mentor Malcolm Goldstein, but couldn't say if he would stop to see me in Boston on the way. I thought sour thoughts about improvisation, Randy never turned up, and one bright morning a few months later I got a phone call that he was dead.
All of the music Randy loves is still alive. We can commune with him by listening to his collage of voices, "Happily Ever After" -or to Duke Ellington's "Take the "A Train," or Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring," or Jonathan Richman's "Jonathan Sings" -- or to "Get the Funk out Ma Face" by the Brothers Johnson.
Randy's memorial service was on February 19th, at Cedar Lane Unitarian Church, in Bethesda. The large church was packed. A hastily assembled chorus of musical colleagues sang "Tell Me Where is Fancy Bred," a sprightly piece Randy had composed the year I met him. Eric Hostetler read a lovely piece of zen philosophy. Friends gave eulogies, and shared memories. The service ended with a recording of Louis Armstrong singing "What a Wonderful World."
If held been at the service, Randy would have stood in the back, shuffling his feet during the eulogies, listening less to the words than to the musical sounds of dress shoes striking a church floor, and stifled coughs rising from the balcony.
Listening to the eulogies, I learned new things about my old friend. Still shocked at his passing, I also felt deep gratitude for all that he had done in 32 years. I fought back tears for as long as I could, then wept.
(Reprinted from The Sidwell Friends Alumni Magazine, Fall l996)
